(Vatican Radio) In his Wednesday audience Pope Benedict XVI continued his catechesis
on the Creed, reflecting on what it means when we call God the Father Almighty. Emer
McCarthy reports:
Speaking to
a packed Paul VI audience hall, Pope Benedict reflected that it is not always easy
today to talk about fatherhood. Especially in the West, where broken families, increasing
work commitments, the concerns of trying to balance the family budget as well as the
distracting invasion of the mass media in daily life can prevent a peaceful and constructive
relationship between fathers and children”.
At times, he added: “communication
becomes difficult, trust can be lost and relationships with the father figure can
become problematic. And without adequate models of reference even imagining God as
a father becomes problematic”.
Particularly for people who have experienced
overly authoritarian or absentee fathers.
But Pope Benedict said Wednesday
biblical revelation helps us to overcome these difficulties by telling us about a
God who shows us what it truly means to be a "father", a loving, patient and forgiving
father who is also Almighty
Pope Benedict concluded: “Saying, I believe in
God the Father Almighty, in His power, in His way of being a father, is always an
act of faith, conversion, transformation of our thoughts, our love, our whole way
of life". Following the audience the Pope tweeted : "Every human being is loved
by God the Father. No one need feel forgotten, for every name is written in the Lord's
loving Heart".
Below a Vatican Radio translation of the Holy Father’s
catechesis [original text: Italian]
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
in
last Wednesday’s catechesis we reflected on the words of the Creed: "I believe in
God." But the profession of faith specifies this affirmation: God, the Father Almighty,
Creator of heaven and earth. Thus I would like to reflect with you now on the first,
fundamental definition of God that the Creed presents us with: He is our Father.
It
is not always easy today to talk about fatherhood. Especially in our Western world,
the broken families, increasingly absorbing work commitments, concerns, and often
the fatigue of trying to balance the family budget, the distracting invasion of the
mass media in daily life are some of the many factors that can prevent a peaceful
and constructive relationship between fathers and children.
At times communication
becomes difficult, trust can be lost and relationships with the father figure can
become problematic. Even imagining God as a father becomes problematic, not having
had adequate models of reference. For those who have had the experience of an overly
authoritarian and inflexible father, or an indifferent father lacking in affection,
or even an absent father, it is not easy to think of God as Father and trustingly
surrender oneself to Him.
But the biblical revelation helps us to overcome
these difficulties telling us about a God who shows us what it truly means to be a
"father", and it is especially the Gospel which reveals the face of God as a Father
who loves even to the giving of his own Son for the salvation humanity. The reference
to the father figure therefore helps us to understand something of the love of God
which remains infinitely greater, more faithful, more total than that of any man.
"Which of you, - says Jesus to show the disciples the Father's face - would hand his
son a stone when he asks for a loaf of bread, or a snake when he asks for a fish?
If you then, who are wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much
more will your heavenly Father give good things to those who ask him"(Mt 7.9 to 11;
cf. Lk 11.11 to 13 ). God is our Father because He has blessed and chosen us before
the foundation of the world (cf. Eph 1:3-6); he really made us his children in Jesus
(cf. 1 Jn 3:1). And, as Father, God lovingly accompanies our lives, giving us His
Word, His teachings, His grace, His Spirit.
He - as revealed in Jesus - is
the Father who feeds the birds of the sky even though they so not sow and reap, and
vests the fields with colours of wonderful colours, with clothes more beautiful than
those of King Solomon (cf. Mt 6.26 to 32 and Luke 12.24-28), and we - adds Jesus -
are worth far more than the flowers of birds of the sky! And if He is good enough
to make " his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just
and the unjust" (Matthew 5:45), we can always, without fear and with total confidence,
trust in his Father’s forgiveness when go wrong. God is a good Father who welcomes
and embraces the lost and repented son (cf. Luke 15.11 ff), He gives himself freely
to those who ask (cf. Mt 18.19, Mk 11.24, Jn 16:23) and offers the bread of Heaven
and the living water that gives life forever (cf. Jn 6,32.51.58).
Therefore,
the prayer of Psalm 27, surrounded by enemies, besieged by evil and slanderers, and
seeking help from the Lord, and invoking it, can give its testimony full of faith,
saying: " Even if my father and mother forsake me, the LORD will take me in "(v.
10). God is a Father who never abandons his children, a loving Father who supports,
helps, welcomes, forgives, saves, with a fidelity that immensely surpasses that of
men, opening up to an eternal dimension. "For his mercy endures forever," as Psalm
136 continues to repeat in a litany, in every verse, through the history of salvation.
The love of God never fails, never tires of us, it is a love that gives to the extreme,
even to the sacrifice of His Son. Faith gifts us this certainty, which becomes a sure
rock in the construction of our lives so that we can face those moments of difficulty
and danger, experience those times of darkness, crisis and pain, supported by the
faith that God never abandons us and is always near, to save us and bring us to life.
It
is in the Lord Jesus that we fully see the benevolent face of the Father who is in
heaven. It is in knowing Him that we can know the Father (cf. Jn 8.19, 14.7), in seeing
Him we can the Father, because He is in the Father and the Father is in Him (cf. Jn
14, 9.11). He is the "image of the invisible God" as defined by the hymn of the Letter
to the Colossians, "the firstborn of all creation ... the firstborn of those who rise
from the dead", "through whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins" and reconciliation
of all things, “making peace by the blood of his cross [through him], whether those
on earth or those in heaven" (cf. Col 1.13 to 20).
Faith in God the Father
asks you to believe in the Son, through the action of the Spirit, recognizing in the
Cross that saves the final revelation of Divine love. God is our Father giving his
Son for us, God is our Father, forgiving our sins and bringing us to the joy of the
risen life, God is our Father giving us the Spirit that makes us children and allows
us to call Him, in truth, "Abba, Father "(cf. Rom 8:15). This is why Jesus, teaching
us to pray, invites us to say "Our Father" (Mt 6.9 to 13; cf. Lk 11:2-4).
The
fatherhood of God, then, is infinite love, a tenderness that leans over us, weak children,
in need of everything. Psalm 103, the great hymn of divine mercy, proclaims: “As a
father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear
him For he knows how we are formed, remembers that we are dust, for he knows how we
are formed, he remembers that we are dust" ( vs. 13-14). It is our smallness, our
weak human nature, our frailty that becomes an appeal to the mercy of the Lord so
that He manifest the greatness and tenderness of a Father helping us, forgives us
and saving us.
And God responds to our call, sending His Son, who died and
rose again for us; He enters into our fragility and does that which man alone could
never do: he takes upon himself the sins of the world, like an innocent lamb, and
he re-opens for us the path to communion with God, he makes us true children of God.
There, in the Paschal Mystery, the definitive role of the Father is revealed in all
its brightness. And it is there, on the glorious Cross, that the full manifestation
of the greatness of God as "the Father Almighty" is manifest.
But we might
ask: how is it possible to imagine a God almighty looking at the Cross of Christ?
At this evil power that arrives at killing the Son of God? We would prefer a divine
omnipotence according to our thought patterns and our desires: an "Almighty" God who
solves problems, who intervenes to save us from every difficulty, who defeats all
adversaries, who changes the course of events and removes all pain. Thus, today many
theologians say that God can not be omnipotent otherwise there would not be so much
suffering, so much evil in the world. Indeed in the face of evil and suffering, it
becomes difficult for many to believe in God the Father and believe Him to be Almighty;
some seek refuge in idols, yielding to the temptation to find an answer in an alleged
"magic" omnipotence and its illusory promises.
But faith in the Almighty God
pushes us to follow very different paths, to understand that God’s thoughts are different
to ours and his that God's ways are different from ours , and even his omnipotence
is different: it is not expressed as an automatic or arbitrary force, but is marked
by a loving and fatherly freedom. In fact, God, in creating free creatures, in gifting
freedom, waived a portion of His power, leaving the power of our freedom. In so doing,
He loves and respects the free response of his call to love. As a Father, He wants
us to become His children and we live as such in his Son, in communion, in full intimacy
with Him. His omnipotence is not expressed in violence, in an adverse power, but
in mercy, forgiveness, in accepting our freedom, in an untiring call to conversion
of heart, in a seemingly weak attitude, God seems weak if we see Jesus Christ who
prays, who allows himself to be killed, but the attitude that is apparently weak,
made of patience, gentleness and love, shows that this is the true way of power and
strength. This is the power of God and this is victorious. The Wiseman in the Book
of Wisdom turns to God: “But you have mercy on all, because you can do all things;
and you overlook sins for the sake of repentance. For you love all things that are
and loathe nothing that you have made; for you would not fashion what you hate But
you spare all things, because they are yours, O Ruler and Lover of souls"(11:23-24a
.26).
Only the truly powerful can endure pain and show compassion, and only
the truly powerful can fully exercise the power of love. And God, to whom all things
belong because all things were made by Him, reveals His power loving everyone and
everything, in a patient waiting for the conversion of us men, whom He wants to have
as children. God is waiting for our conversion. The all-powerful love of God knows
no bounds, so much so that "He did not spare his own Son, but delivered Him up for
us all" (Romans 8:32). The omnipotence of love is not that of the power of the world,
but that of total gift, and Jesus, the Son of God, reveals to the world the omnipotence
of the Father giving his life for us sinners. This is the real, authentic and perfect
divine power to respond to evil mot with evil, but with good, to insults with forgiveness,
murderous hatred with love that gives life. So evil is really defeated, because washed
by the love of God, death is finally defeated because it is turned into the gift of
life. God the Father raises His Son: death, the great enemy (cf. 1 Cor 15:26), is
swallowed up and deprived of its poison (cf. 1 Cor 15.54 to 55), and we made free
from sin, we can access our reality of being God's children
When we say "I
believe in God the Father Almighty," we express our faith in the power of the love
of God which in his Son who died and rose again, defeats hatred, evil, sin and gifts
us eternal life, that of the children who want to always be in the "Father's House".
Saying, I believe in God the Father Almighty, in His power, in His way of being a
father, is always an act of faith, conversion, transformation of our thoughts, our
love, our whole way of life.
Dear brothers and sisters, we ask the Lord
to sustain our faith and give us the strength to proclaim Christ crucified and risen
to help us to truly find the faith and to bear witness to love of God and neighbour.
May God grant that we receive the gift of our sonship, to fully live the reality of
the Creed, in trusting love of the Father and His merciful omnipotence, the true omnipotence
that saves.
Summary in English
Dear Brothers and Sisters, In
our continuing catechesis during this Year of Faith, we now reflect on the Creed’s
description of God as “the Father Almighty”. Despite the crisis of fatherhood in
many societies, the Scriptures show us clearly what it means to call God “Father”.
God is infinitely generous, faithful, and forgiving; he so loves the world that he
has given us his only Son for our salvation. As “the image of the invisible God”
(Col 1:15), Jesus reveals God as a merciful Father who never abandons his children
and whose loving concern for us embraces even the Cross. In Christ, God has made
us his adopted sons and daughters. The Cross shows also us how God our Father is
“almighty”. His omnipotence transcends our limited human concepts of power; his might
is that of a patient love expressed in the ultimate victory of goodness over evil,
life over death, and freedom over the bondage of sin. As we contemplate the Cross
of Christ, let us turn to God the almighty Father and implore the grace to abandon
ourselves with confidence and trust to his merciful love and his saving power.
Greetings
to English speaking pilgrims
I offer a warm welcome to the priests
taking part in the Institute for Continuing Theological Education at the Pontifical
North American College. Upon all the English-speaking visitors present at today’s
Audience, including those from the Republic of Korea, Canada and the United States
of America, I invoke God’s blessings of joy and peace.